


Forewarn

by climaxed (orphan_account)



Category: Ginga Eiyuu Densetsu | Legend of the Galactic Heroes
Genre: Gen, episode 103
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-27
Updated: 2016-07-27
Packaged: 2018-07-27 02:57:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7600750
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/climaxed
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In which Muller sees ahead, tries to prevent the worst, and inevitably fails.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forewarn

**Author's Note:**

> this entire arc was a mess

**March 20th**

Bittenfeld pouted throughout the entire car trip to the hotel. He’d been muttering, unsurprisingly, a ceaseless stream of invectives for the past half hour, peppered with whatever curse words he could sneak in that would sound convincingly (in theory) unintelligible if he mumbled them out quickly enough. Having mercifully acquired the coveted skill of being able to tune Bittenfeld’s noise out, or at least most of it, Muller had been putting it for good use for the past ten minutes and a half. Bittenfeld was a very stubborn man who’d just cursed Oberstein out as being the human incarnation of at least five different types of vermin, but Neidhardt Muller wasn’t called the Ironshield for nothing. 

Even around five minutes later, when the car not too far ahead of them which hauled Oberstein and his lapdog of a subordinate turned round a corner to head straight to the Government General’s building where the man would stay occupied for most of his days—filing dull paperwork or sending rude withering glares to whoever subordinate both not named Anton Ferner and also unfortunate enough to walk by, or handing out orders unrelated to actual combat or whatever mysterious and nefariously objectionable deeds a person holding such a remarkably nonsense-sounding title of “Minister of Military Affairs” was supposed to do—Bittenfeld’s sour disposition was only mildly eased, and by mildly, meaning not at all. 

“Out of sight but not out of mind!” This time he didn’t even attempt to let it slip by quietly under his breath. He’d assumed habitual defensive position, with arms across his chest. Somehow he managed to make himself look even more like an angry child than usual. It would be funnier, Muller decided, if it weren’t so likely to jeopardize the mission at hand—probably by way of Bittenfeld trying to punch Oberstein’s artificial eyes out of their sockets, having apparently exhausted all manners of better ways in which to respectfully tell Oberstein that he should by all means shut his mouth, or rather preferably, do something good for once and drop dead right that second.

The worst part was possibly that it didn’t sound the least bit absurd. If he’d called up Wahlen from light-years away through the restricted-to-voice-only communications system and told him that he should hasten his journey to Heinessen to meet up with him right away because Bittenfeld just attempted to reenact one of his favorite wrestling matches with Oberstein as opponent and Ferner standing by as horrified spectator while he frantically reached to phone for security, the older man would probably take his word at face value. 

That was simply the sort of person Bittenfeld was, so innate it was that it would be stupid to think otherwise, and conversely they thought the same of Oberstein—perpetually ill-maintained electronic eyes and ruthless lack of regard for integrity, decency, or personal opinions of any sort alike. This miserably unfitting combination of such starkly contrasting personalities between them had resulted in countless amounts of migraine and dismay among the admirals, most of whom including Muller himself were on varying levels of reluctance to acknowledge either Bittenfeld or Oberstein as their colleagues, or in fact having anything to do with them at all—and this was in regards to a regular, ordinary working day, one in which the Kaiser hadn’t for some reason decided it would be a prudent idea to trust Bittenfeld to take Oberstein’s orders lying obediently down while they set aside their deeply rooted mutual antipathy in favor of a common goal of making sure this critical mission to render the republicans in Heinessen under control would proceed without a hitch. 

Now, Muller deeply respected the Kaiser, surely as much as the next admiral did, in fact probably more, but still even he couldn’t help grimacing at the thought. He thought then that he should start taking precautions as to make sure that didn’t happen. At this point he was beginning, belatedly, to suspect this was the real reason the Kaiser decided to have him accompany them both to Heinessen. His grimace, already pitiful enough, deepened further at the thought of that. Bittenfeld was still too busy wallowing in sulk to ignore his obvious discomfort.

Muller almost considered posing the theory to Bittenfeld, to at least try and lighten the mood, but his blessed better judgment intervened against it in favor of diplomatic silence. Instead he distracted himself by looking at the street and dutifully filing through every possible method in his repertoire to keep Bittenfeld’s explosive outbursts to an absolute, absolute minimum.

(Knowing Bittenfeld, that probably meant thrice a day. At best.)

* * *

**March 25th**

“Is Admiral Wahlen arriving today?”

The commodore in front of him placed the files on Muller’s desk, piling everything into a neat stack at the corner with the sort of extra care only an overworked subordinate suffering from a toxic combination of culture shock and pathological thirst for validation would have. Upon hearing the question he hesitated a bit before shaking his head respectfully in perfunctory dismay of a man who had nothing of substance to offer and knew it. “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Sir,” he said.

“Well, thanks for the documents.” He smiled. “And don’t stress it too much; I was just pulling your leg.”

The young man looked almost comically flustered, but soon he left without further protest. Muller’s own smile followed soon after. The stack of paper on his desk offered little consolation to his predicament. For the past four days he’d been doing a passable job of keeping Bittenfeld’s mind (and rage) away from Oberstein, who had, by the late traitor Reuenthal’s own grace, stationed himself a good distance away from the hotel where they’ve set up their headquarters. By now Muller was afraid he was running out of distractions.

He’s taken him sightseeing under the guise of “helping patrol the current state of public order”, never mind Oberstein already went ahead and arrested every single human being he thought could be the slightest bit of threat to public order, discussed future plans to recapture Iserlohn Fortress, which seemed to placate Bittenfeld for a while, and they even spent some time together wondering how those so-called “vending machines” work, why there were so many of them littering every other corner of the streets, and what sorts of nasty chemicals the former Alliance people put in their drinks to make them fizz and crackle so much when you popped them open.

Unsurprisingly, it took an estimated amount of three whole minutes before they discovered firsthand the consequences of shaking and opening a bottle of one of these “fizzy drinks”.

Two ruined uniforms and a dropped bottle later, Muller was convinced this was a horrible decision, but Bittenfeld just started laughing, because apparently having fizzy raspberry-flavored liquid being hurled at his face without warning struck him as hilarious instead of utterly humiliating, and he was still laughing on the way back to the office—even though to Muller the comedy of the situation had diminished quite significantly as soon as he realized he would need to get his clothes dry cleaned again, even though he just did that yesterday—even with embarrassing pink splotches on his shirt and pants the driver fortunately knew better than to ask about.

The incident kept Oberstein at the back burner for a few days, which was a relief, but now the novelty was starting to wear off and frankly, Muller found himself now at a bit at a loss. He thought then of how nice it would be if Wahlen were here already to back him up, but one couldn’t just go and phone a colleague in using top-secret communication channels just to tell him he was having problems with babysitting and needed urgent help, now, could one? 

* * *

**March 30th**

“I’m sorry I couldn’t have gotten here sooner,” Wahlen said well-meaningly over lunch, the day he arrived. “There were some unexpected delays.”

“At least you’re here now,” Muller sighed. He had the pervasive urge to slump in his seat, but was a better person than that. “That’s what matters.”

“Why? Is the work a bit too overwhelming?” he asked. “I figure it’s Oberstein, though. He must be keeping you both on a tight leash.”

Muller paused to stir more sugar into his coffee. One spoonful of artificial Heinessen sugar tasted exponentially sweeter than the same amount of the kind produced in Empire territories. Muller suspected the former Alliance people had simply been born with less efficient taste buds as a result of their ancestors’ prolonged exposure to harmful conditions in their attempt to flee the Empire using their primitive junk heap of a ship, and now, hundreds of years later, they had compensated for it by way of intensifying the flavor of their artificial condiments and flavorings by the tenfold—which had to be true, because his coffee now tasted far too sweet and was therefore absolutely undrinkable.

“No—well, that is true, but I’m more worried about Bittenfeld, to be honest with you,” he said. “He hates Oberstein more than we all do, combined, but you should know that already.”

Wahlen laughed, surprisingly enough, and Muller was somewhat unsure if it were due to his statement or due to the awkward way he was running his tongue across the roof of his mouth in an attempt to get the sticky, unpleasant sweet taste out of it for good. “You might be overthinking it,” he said. “You aren’t even stationed in the same building as he is. And besides—no major incidents have happened yet, has it? Give him a little credit.” He sounded almost startlingly flippant, and yet at the same time, a tiny bit convincing.

Muller eased a bit, tentatively. “Maybe you’re right. He hasn’t ended up ripping off half of his uniform in the middle of a tantrum, that’s for sure. Still, he seems more agitated than usual lately. Something’s definitely bothering him.”

“Don’t worry too much,” Wahlen assured again, but this time he said so with a tone Muller realized was too chipper for him to be entirely truthful, and so ceased being the slightest bit convincing. “He might be Bittenfeld, but he’s still an adult. I’m sure he can maintain some pretense of professionalism.”

“Well, I hope so.” He hoped so, for the good of all involved, but what he expected was a different matter. Momentarily he half-considered asking Bittenfeld himself if something really was bothering him—but then he remembered he had work of the paper sort to do that afternoon. And so, despite the fact he usually knew better than to not listen to his judgment, no matter how hard it had to strain to get its word in, the thought was callously brushed aside.

* * *

**April 1st**

The Rear Admiral, as eager a subordinate as ever, was quick to show them the door the moment he was asked to, despite the three of them knowing precisely where the door was, thank you very much, and also that they would’ve bolted straight out of that room in a second anyway, even if it meant forcefully restraining Bittenfeld for a third time in the process, because Odin knows what terrible things might happen if they didn’t. Ferner looked like he was holding his hands rigidly behind his back not because it was proper position, but rather to stop himself from literally shooing them away with dismissing gestures of his hands as though he were poising a broom and the three admirals were unwelcome mice.

They made their way down the hallway and to the exit without a word spoken between them. If they were men of redeemable character they would have shared an admiration for the gentle way in which the skyline outside the building’s stately wide glass windows was starting to slant into evening, but they weren’t, and regardless of character they had come out of the room with foul moods and wounded pride to begin with, anyway, and so they didn’t. Sunset filtered in softly through the glass and everything caught in its path as it fell seemed to glimmer in the most delightful shade of red. 

It was then in that moment Muller realized the glare of the light was so harsh it nearly fooled him into thinking Bittenfeld had somehow set his hair aflame. The optical illusion broke when he blinked, which happened to be at the same time in which Wahlen decided he’s had enough of silence, and snapped.

“For Odin’s sake, I can’t believe you!” He was pointing at Bittenfeld with the wrong hand. Upon closer inspection the prosthetic replacements’ moves were a touch delayed, but it delivered roughly the same intended effect of emphasizing one’s speech without looking too uncanny. “That was assault!”

“Certainly the meeting didn’t go as well as it could have,” Muller lamely tried to placate, but then realized he didn’t know how else to finish the sentence except with a deep, frustrated, self-pityingly mournful noise, which surely would comfort nobody at all except for himself.

“An understatement if I’ve ever heard one,” Wahlen said. He rubbed at the side of his head, probably hurting from calculating the amount of cleanup duty he and Muller would have to share while Bittenfeld stayed in the time-out corner—no, sorry,  _ house arrest _ ’s the proper, decent,  _ legal  _ term—to think about the sheer stupidity of what he’d done. “I can’t believe this,” he repeated himself. “Look, Bittenfeld, I know you want to dig your nails into that slimy viper’s scrawny neck at least once, because believe me, we all did at some point, but I never expected you actually go that far!”

Muller, who had the arguably unfortunate privilege of being relatively the closest in familiarity and acquaintance to the man, dating all the way back to the days when they attended military school, a period in which Bittenfeld’s claims of a strapping figure and an at the time impressive three years head start of seniority fooled Muller into thinking he was actually cool, or anywhere close to it, begged to differ—but by then he’d already tuned out the rest of their argument in favor of letting the feeling of failure set in and to mourn his ruined spare shirt, now stained, possibly permanently at that, with fizzy hot pink residue, and all of it for nothing.

**Author's Note:**

> [Useless LOGH headcanon: on Heinessen for the first time in their lives Admirals experienced many wonders of the modern world. Like soda cans, for example.](http://nirmart.tumblr.com/post/131000704067/nirmart-this-may-be-a-trap-you-know-useless)
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> [Bittenfeld, showing off his ripped sleeves (and ripped everything else tbh, also a bandana) in the new manga adaptation.](http://kaiserine.tumblr.com/post/147397985450/hydlide-replied-to-your-posthydlide-replied-to)


End file.
